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Air France jet did not break up in mid-air: investigators

Paola Totaro

French crash investigators have revealed that the Air France flight which killed 228 people en route between Brazil and Paris on June 1 did not break up mid-air but fell vertically into the Atlantic.

At a press conference in Le Bourget to make public their initial findings, investigators said Flight 447 dropped out of the sky in a remote area outside radar coverage but without the black boxes, the cause may remain a mystery.

Alain Bouillard, from the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA accident investigation body said: "The plane was not destroyed while in flight. The plane appears to have hit the surface of the water in flying position with a strong vertical acceleration."

According to the initial report, life vests found with the wreckage around 930 miles from the Brazilian mainland were not inflated, suggesting there was no time to implement emergency measures for a sea ditch.

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They stated that a flurry of automatic messages sent out by the aircraft’s computers before it fell provided little detail on position and that now, as the black box signals will start to fade, a full diagnosis may not be possible.

There has been widespread speculation that the automatic messages emitted by the Air France plane indicated it was receiving incorrect speed information from its external monitoring instruments, which could destabilise control systems.

Some experts raised the possibility – and examples of past incidents – in which these external monitors, known as pitot tubes, may have iced over.

Air France has now replaced the monitors on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft.

The investigators said that French submarines and research vessels would continue the search for the black boxes until July 10. However without the evidence they contain, the BEA can only provide initial findings are based on the automated messages sent by the plane minutes before it lost contact, and clues from the wreckage and the remains of 51 people that have been recovered by investigators.

Beacons attached to data recorders are built to emit signals for 30 days after a crash but can continue to do so for up to 45 days, it is reported.

They are believed to have gone down somewhere over an underwater territory full of crevases and this, combined with the mysterious end of the plane which occurred in silence as the pilots appeared to have no time to make contact on radio or make may day calls, has made it one of the most difficult inquiries, they said.

Debris and clues left by the crash of a Yemenia Air Airbus 310 with 153 people on board – with just one survivor – on Tuesday is likely to provide more accessible evidence.